1603 - "ANGLIA REGNUM SI QUOD ALIUD IN TOTO OCEANO DITISSIMUM ET FLORENTISSIMUM"

A rare and very decorative map of England and Wales after the map of England by Christopher Saxton from 1579. Commissioned by Jacob Vrients and engraved by Pieter van den Keere, probably the finest engraver of his time. Vrients used the map in the Ortelius atlases published by him between 1602 and 1613. According to Marcel Van den Broecke, only 425 copies were printed, a small number compared to most Ortelius maps. Since only a small percentage of the maps survived this long time, this is the reason for the great rarity of the Vrients Anglia regnum map today. This example comes from the Latin edition of the Ortelius Atlas printed in 1603.

Condition is excellent with central fold as issued.

Size approximately 54cm x 44cm including the margins.

In the 1570s, Lord Burghley, the chief minister to Queen Elizabeth I, commissioned Christopher Saxton to conduct the first systematic survey of each of the counties of England and Wales. The result was the publication of Saxton's magnificent Atlas of England and Wales (1579), which included his groundbreaking national map Anglia. It took some time for the leading Continental map publishers to recognize the superior nature of Saxton's work. Most notably, the great Abraham Ortelius continued to rely on Humphrey Lhuyd's outdated map as the basis for the maps of England in Wales published in the mutliple editions of the Theatrum. Following Ortelius' death in 1598, the production of the Theatrum was taken up by Jan Baptiste Vrients, who was determined to improve upon the quality of the engraving and to add new maps based on the most progressive sources. Vrients commissioned Pieter van den Keere, perhaps the finest map engraver of the period, to cut the plates for the present map of England and Wales.

A dramatic improvement over Ortelius' Lhuyd map, Saxton's geography was so progressive that it remained the basic template for all the general maps of England and Wales printed until well into the eighteenth-century. In spite of the impressive nature of Vrients and Van den Keere's efforts, the map made only rare appearances in select editions of the Theatrum, published between 1603 and Vrients' death in 1612. This factor, combined with the low survival rate of maps from the period, accounts for the great rarity of Vrients' Anglia, Regnum today Decorated with three cartouches, a naval battle commemorating the victory over the Spanish Armada and a coat of arms with the inscription Hony soit qui mal y pense (Shame on those who think badly about it). Latin text on verso.